300 Truckers Protest With Noisy Convoy

More than 300 truckers staged a protest Monday against wages and working conditions on the Los Angeles and Long Beach docks by driving through the harbor areas in a noisy convoy, then heading up the Long Beach Freeway to downtown Los Angeles, where they drove near City Hall.

The procession, which ended at the railroad yards near downtown, was high-spirited but not angry, with drivers in bobtailed truck cabs blaring their horns and exchanging thumbs-up signs.

Long Beach police said the 2 1/2-hour harbor-area protest was orderly and did not tie up street traffic or prevent other truckers from entering or leaving the harbor berths.

“We didn’t want to hurt anybody or to block anybody,” Tom Langdon, one of the protesting truckers, said. “We just want to let the pier businesses know how strong we are and that we will have to be dealt with. This was just a show of strength.”

The protest, which began at 7 a.m., was organized by a group of independent truckers under the aegis of the Owners Drivers Division of Teamsters Local 692, which most of the truckers are in the process of joining.

The union has received applications from more than 700 of the harbor area’s 1,200 truckers in the last six weeks because of dissatisfaction with conditions on the docks, said Monte Ogden, a spokesman for the Long Beach-area Teamsters local.

Ogden said the union intends to begin contract negotiations on behalf of the drivers with the shippers and trucking companies that employ them in the next few weeks.

Source of Discontent

At the heart of the protest, and the key issue in the contract talks, are the per-haul rates paid by port businesses, the elimination of compensation for the time truckers spend waiting for cargo loads, high insurance costs and the expected opening of a new $54-million rail yard close to the ports next year.

During the last decade, port businesses have lowered the rate they pay to truckers for the 24-mile haul to the main rail yard in downtown Los Angeles from about $80 per trip to $40 to $55, Langdon said. In addition, a $20-per-hour fee paid to truckers waiting for cargo was eliminated two years ago. The truckers said they sometimes wait as long as four hours for a load.

“We’re pawns, man,” said Ron Coday, a truck driver who helped organize the protest. “Three and a half years ago we were making twice as much for half the work. Now I’ve got to work six and seven days a week just to try to keep even with my bills.”